Christ the King
Association

Reflections on Our Missionby
Bruce Yocum, Moderator of Christ the King Association

What
the Lord Has Been Saying to Us
There are five things we believe the Lord has said to our communities
over the years.
1) God has called us to build and foster Christian community in an
age of radical change in which the cultural supports for living the
Christian
way of life are being destroyed.

2) God has called us to be a bulwark; ie. by building
community
and
making links between those communities, to provide shelter, support and
strength for one another and for others against the trials and
challenges
of this age.

3) God has called us to be a missionary people; ie. as
communities
to
be a group of Christian men and women who serve in Christian mission in
an age of spiritual warfare.

4) God has called us to proclaim His word through evangelism
so
that
men and women can come to know Him as the Lord; and to proclaim the
truth
of His word in an age when the truth of His word is being undermined
and
attacked.

5) God has called us to foster the unity of His people in
our
daily
life and mission.

The Age in Which We Live
Running throughout the Lord's word to us is a strong conviction that
our call is a specific response to the age in which we live. There is
something
different about this age that is specifically linked to the mission God
has called us to.

We live in an age of massive social and cultural change,
comparable
to the cataclysmic change which took place in Western Europe during the
fifth century. This time period witnessed the final decay and collapse
of the Roman Empire in the west as a result of the barbaric invasions.
The well established and largely Christianized Greco-Roman social and
cultural
order crumbled away and was aggressively replaced by a very different
social
order. This change was so cataclysmic and rapid that many thoughtful
Christians
thought they were witnessing the end of the world.

In a similar way today, the Judeo-Christian social and
cultural
order
of Western civilization is crumbling in front of our eyes and being
aggressively
replaced by something different. As in the fifth century, we are seeing
the culmination of a process of disintegration and decay that began
long
ago. As in the fifth century, a social and cultural order hospitable to
Christianity is being replaced by one that is actively antagonistic to
it.

This is not to say that everything about the old social order
was
good,
or that everything about the new order is bad. Nor is it true that
things
are so different that nothing of the old order is contained in the new.
However, it is clear that the new order is consciously anti-Christian,
which is why many refer to our society as "post-Christian".

The new order is not simply a rejection of Christianity, it is
also
a rejection of many of the most fundamental norms of all prior human
civilizations
(eg. the traditional family, heterosexuality, any differentiation on
the
roles of men and women).

The
Link between Our Mission and Our Age
I think there is a direct connection between the kind of social and
cultural dislocation that we are seeing and the emergence of Christian
community. In the fifth century it was the monastic movement and the
communities
that sprang up around the monastic communities that carried forward
into
the new culture those elements of the old order that were essential for
the survival of civilization and for its Christianization.

For centuries there has been a link from generation to
generation in
passing on what is essential for understanding and living Christianity.
For many people that link was broken in the last generation. This break
makes the task of passing on the Christian way of life to the next
generation
much more difficult. Communities can play an important role in
preserving
the kind of living witness to the gospel and Christian way of life that
can preserve and transmit these essential elements to future
generations.

Thus, it should be no mystery to us why the Lord would call us
to
community
for such a time as this. It should also come as no surprise to us when
we encounter obstacles and difficulties in carrying out our mission.
For
we have been called to preserve in our communities the very things
which
the new social order is aggressively working to destroy.